What are emotions? how do they impact my relationship?
Since the time of early Greek Philosophers, western society has had a strong distrust of emotions. We feel that our emotions are leading us astray and getting us to do things that are not logical or not in our best interests. This distrust of emotions has caused a disconnect from our emotions and reason. These twoare seenn as opposites to each other, where people are attempting to leave their emotions behind in order to make a rational decision. The fact is there is a strong relationship between our reason and our emotions.
The first step to understanding this relationship is to understand what emotions are. Emotions are an early warning system for the “stuff” that is happening around us. Take, for example, we are walking down the street, and a dog jumps out and scares us. We jump in surprise and fear. This surprise and fear are intended to respond to the environment faster than our reason is able to. We feel significantly faster than we think, and our emotions are our first response to what we see in our environment.
Emotions also are the primary factor in storing information. So much happens in our environment that it is impossible to remember every detail. If we did not remember every detail, that would be very detrimental to us. What differentiates between things that we can forget and things that we can remember is our emotions. If something stirs up emotion in us, this gets filed away as important information; however, if there is no emotional response to stimuli, then it is most likely safe to forget. However, if we go back to the dog, since it surprised us, the next time we are walking, we will want to remember where the dog is so that we can avoid it the next time.
These are important things to remember about emotions. Rather than thinking that our emotions are irrational and our reason is untainted and pure. Our emotions make up a large portion of what our reason actually is. Instead of having this distrust of emotions, is it possible that these emotions are trying to help? Is it possible that we listen to what our emotions are saying instead of trying to think more calmly without emotions interfering? By doing this we may gain a better understanding of what is going on in our lives, particularly our relationships, which are typically highly emotional.
As important as these emotions are in understanding what is going on with us as a person. Regarding relationships, our emotions respond quickly to what our partner is doing. We get strong messages about the actions that we see our partners take. These emotions impact us far faster than our reason, and we respond to what our partner is doing as a threat to what we need. The more we respond to these emotions, the more escalated arguments become, and the bigger these emotions feel. This causes a larger response from our partner, and we get into large escalated cycles that seem hopeless.
These emotions although they feel big at the moment, these emotions are trying to help. They attempt to get our partners to listen, care about them, and stop doing the actions that are hurting us. The more we respond to these emotions, the more we create this familiar cycle. Figuring out and learning to talk about these emotions and having our partner do the same is the way out of these crazy cycles. This is easier said than done, but with work and learning to have new conversations, we can have our partner understand what we are experiencing in the relationship.
